Monday, May 23, 2011

News items and comments

Sack McDade and Gillard
IT would be wrong to think Friday's pre-trial ruling to drop manslaughter charges against Australian commandos means there has been no trial.
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So we can fight a change that isn't happening and which we can't oppose effectively.
ONE of Australia's largest electricity suppliers TRUenergy has warned household power bills will double in six years after a carbon price is introduced and uncertainty over its implementation might le...
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Isn't this a project the ALP had opposed?
IN a step forward for Aboriginal employment, 18 indigenous trainees were inducted into NORFORCE yesterday, with a graduation parade in Darwin.
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Billions will follow in waste on the NBN
RESEARCH released today shows that Australians are going online, yet broadband consumers are over-spending on connections by $141 million through not knowing what they need.
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What do they taste like?
CITY parks might soon feature designer cracks in walls, fallen logs and long grass after the first survey of Sydney wildlife revealed disturbingly few blue-tongue lizards.
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ALP take their constituents for granted
DUBBED the "King and Queen of Marrickville", together Anthony Albanese and Carmel Tebbutt represented a significant power base in Australian politics as federal Infrastructure Minister and former NSW ...
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The budget was worthless, as Gillards call to Barry shows.
NUMBER cruncher or superhero? According to former Labor leader Mark Latham, Treasurer Wayne Swan recently turned into the Incredible Hulk.
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Bad management costs. I'm glad the new family are well.
A WOMAN pregnant with triplets had to be flown interstate to give birth because one of Sydney's largest maternity units did not have enough specialist neonatal cots to care for her babies.
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I like people and don't need to take a pill to have fun. But some people are desperate bores and pils work effectively these days. Pills and those who sell them destroy the lives of those around them.
MORE than 160 pills have been seized at a dance party, including 145 from a man seen acting suspiciously in the bathroom.
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Bad management costs
PARKING in Sydney is getting so expensive that it is cheaper to cop an $86 fine than cough up for a few hours in a carpark.
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Fruit isn't generally flammable
A FAMILY fruit store was in ruins last night after a blaze tore through the business yesterday. Fire crews arrived to find most of the two-storey building ablaze just after 4pm.
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I am not interested in that software. I like what I have on my iPad and touch.
PARENTS are being left with expensive pieces of scrap plastic as children "jailbreak" Apple products in a bid to access unauthorised apps- only to have the gadgets permanently freeze.
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Rudi, unlike Bligh, was magnificent in disaster .. And in administration.
HE MIGHT be on the lecture circuit in Sydney, but former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani is still dreaming of the biggest job in the world- the US presidency.
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Fashion is for when the rubber hits the road
IT'S not just a great read; when you've finished with a newspaper you can wear it as designer recycled fashion.
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That's the right sentence
POLICE killers will be jailed for the rest of their lives under a new state government plan to introduce mandatory sentencing for those found guilty of murdering police officers.
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Federal government incompetence is present in all areas with the exception of waste. They excel at waste.
PENSIONERS with digital TVs are taking government-issued set-top boxes and giving them to friends and family.
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Ridiculous lies, but even if it were true we shouldn't bother with co2 because that would be ineffective.
"THE atmosphere is warming, the ocean is warming, ice is being lost from glaciers and ice caps, and sea levels are rising."
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Sounds good to me. Include drugs with cheating.
CHEATING in sport should be a crime punishable by up to 10 years' jail, the Australian Football League said yesterday.
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I got something personal against such mums
RANDOM breath tests may be introduced near schools after a spike in drunken mothers being busted with their children in the car.
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Just goes to show the federal budget is fiction
AN infrastructure hotline has been opened between Premier Barry O'Farrell and Prime Minister Julia Gillard, sidelining federal Infrastructure Minister Anthony Albanese and renewing hope for the North ...
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Thank you for sharing.
blogs.news.com.au
Piers has been one of The Daily Telegraph and Sunday Telegraph's best-read columnists since 1993. One of the nation's most respected journalists he has worked in New York, London, Washington and Los Angeles.
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http://bajanreporter.com/julian-assange-the-stainless-steel-rat-by-mattokunobaka/
bajanreporter.com
The picture resembles him, and states he’s from Melbourne, Australia. If you place the cursor over the picture, two more fly out. The center picture most resembles his current appearance.


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Are there articles about his claims which are true? Does he have any? I read from his supporters, but they are light on detail.
www.foxnews.com
When given close scrutiny, President Obama's claims on immigration range from minor omissions to major whoppers.
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The next President of the USA?
www.foxnews.com
In the last year and a half, I have crisscrossed the country and shared my vision for America. I have listened to the concerns of folks all across this land -- from the farmer in Iowa to the retiree in Florida to the student in South Carolina.
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They might do a comparative study with women as a control group.
www.foxnews.com
By understanding how squid and similar marine creatures disguise themselves, scientists and engineers hope to produce new camouflage materials.
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Obama supporters pay a high price for that support
www.foxnews.com
The final wave of holdouts has mostly packed up and left this town as water from the swollen Atchafalaya River inched toward their homes, their frustration and hope painted on signs outside thei...
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Lucky we are secular or he could be arrested for blaspheme
www.foxnews.com
So it seems Harold Camping's latest prediction that the world will end Saturday, May 21, 2011, is proving to be false.
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408 DAYS UNTIL LABOR’S INTENSELY AND BITTERLY PERSONAL TAX

Tim Blair – Monday, May 23, 11 (06:41 am)

The New York Times notices Australia’s carbon tax debate:

A plan by the Australian government to introduce the biggest emissions trading scheme outside of the European Union has unleashed a wave of partisan fighting that is threatening to sink the agenda of a second consecutive Labor government.

A call in February by the opposition leader, Tony Abbott, for a “people’s revolt” against the plan has incited one of the most raucous protest movements the country has seen in decades … the political discourse in Australia, which typically favors droll wit over bombast, is turning intensely and bitterly personal, experts say.

Bring on the experts:

“Australian politics is becoming increasingly vitriolic, as I think maybe American politics is too, and especially since Tony Abbott became opposition leader,” Rod Tiffen, a media expert and emeritus professor of political science at the University of Sydney, said in an interview. “The charge and counter-charge has just really escalated and become more personal and, well, simple-minded.”

Oldtimers who recall the personal and simple-minded charges levelled against John Howard and his government – it was removed from office way, way back in 2007 – might be surprised at Tiffen’s assessment.

Now, with both sides increasingly polarized, there is fear that Australian politics is getting increasingly combative — encouraged in part by the media.

There is fear? Srsly?

Mungo MacCallum, a veteran Australian political commentator of more than 40 years, says that politics is increasingly viewed as simply one more form of entertainment.

Well, it’s more entertaining than when Mungo was prominent.

“There is no doubt that the advent of the shock jock, the advent of the populist media and the idea that suddenly nothing is too extreme to be countenanced has become a great deal worse,” he said in an interview.

As opposed to graffiti tags or bird calls. At this point the Times ran out of experts:

David Welch, a 60-year-old artist and supporter of the government plan, said he thought that the tenor of the debate was “much worse” than any he could remember in his lifetime.

He’s an artist on the edge. Too bad about the memory problems.

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SYDNEY FLOODY

Tim Blair – Monday, May 23, 11 (06:31 am)

The SMH’s Ben Cubby, who evidently believes anything, faithfully reports the latest claims from our $5.6 million Climate Commission:

Sydney will be the Australian capital most vulnerable to extreme flooding events, the Climate Commission says.

While the likelihood of damaging floods, storm surges and king tides will increase around the coast, Sydney can expect to see ‘’extreme events’’ once a month by 2100, the commission’s report The Critical Decade says.

The leader of our Climate Commission previously predicted that Sydney would run out of water by 2007. Now he’s hauling in $180,000 of taxpayers’ money per year – working part-time – by predicting too much water. Truly, he is theKing of Tides.

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WE’RE ASKING THE SAME THING

Tim Blair – Monday, May 23, 11 (04:44 am)

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HICKS FOR HICKS

Tim Blair – Monday, May 23, 11 (04:11 am)

Jew-hating Tali-tubby David Hicks thrills the crowd at the Sydney Writers’ Festival:

Former Guantanamo Bay detainee David Hicks says he’s not a monster and hadn’t even heard of al-Qaeda until he was interrogated at the prison camp.

Mr Hicks made his first public appearance at the Sydney Writers’ Festival on Sunday talking about his book Guantanamo: My Journey.

The autobiography recounts his early years growing up in Adelaide, his conversion to Islam to gain a sense of belonging and his travels to Kosovo and Kashmir to help suffering civilians.

“(Afghanistan) is such a small part of my story and yet you get the impression from the media that it was the only part of the story,” Mr Hicks told a packed Sydney Theatre crowd.

“I went to Afghanistan to receive basic military training. I have no problem saying that because that’s what happened.

“I had never heard of the word al-Qaeda until I heard it from the lips of an interrogator in Guantanamo Bay years later.

“There weren’t al-Qaeda training camps where I was. It’s all about Kashmir, my story. It’s not about Afghanistan.”

Now read earlier accounts of Hicks’s story, as told by Hicks himself. You’d imagine that the audience at the Sydney Writers’ Festival, being literate types, might have read those accounts too. So how did they react to Hicks’s latest claims?

Mr Hicks and his father Terry, his long-time supporter, both received standing ovations during the talk.

He brags of meeting Osama bin Laden, waging war on the West and wanting to die for Allah. And those idiots love him.

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BUNYIP ABLAZE

Tim Blair – Sunday, May 22, 11 (01:29 pm)

Although he lives in a billabong and therefore enjoys less than optimum internet connectivity, Professor Bunyip seems able to out-research many better-equipped types. Among the corrected: the SMH’s Ben Cubby and eternalCrikey bumblepuppy Guy Rundle.

(Via Garth Godsman)

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Seas will rise by 99 metres less than the ABC warned

Andrew Bolt – Monday, May 23, 11 (07:00 am)

Even Professor Willi Steffen, an alamrist with the Climate Commission, predicts a sea level rise by 2100 no higher than a metre:

Professor Steffen’s report strongly defends the scientific finding that human emissions of carbon dioxide are causing the world to warm, predicts the sea could rise by up to a metre by 2100...

So we are still waiting for the ABC’s lead science presenter, Robyn Williams, to explain his disgraceful scaremongering:

Andrew Bolt: I’m telling you, there’s a lot of fear out there. So what I do is, when I see an outlandish claim being made...so Tim Flannery suggesting rising seas this next century eight stories high, Professor Mike Archer, dean of engineering at the University of NSW…

Robyn Williams: Dean of science.

Andrew Bolt: Dean of science...suggesting rising seas this next century of up to 100 metres, or Al Gore six metres. When I see things like that I know these are false. You mentioned the IPCC report; that suggests, at worst on best scenarios, 59 centimetres.

Robyn Williams: Well, whether you take the surge or whether you take the actual average rise are different things.

Andrew Bolt: I ask you, Robyn, 100 metres in the next century...do you really think that?

Robyn Williams: It is possible, yes. The increase of melting that they’ve noticed in Greenland and the amount that we’ve seen from the western part of Antarctica, if those increases of three times the expected rate continue, it will be huge.

In fact, the University of Colorado, which maintains the most-quoted dta base for sea-level rise, now admits:

You may also note that rate of sea level rise over recent years has been less than the long-term average. This is believed to be due to the recent La Nina’s we have been experiencing, though research on this is continuing...

And a new in the Journal of Coastal Research says sea level rises are actually decelerating:

It is essential that investigations continue to address why this worldwide-temperature increase has not produced acceleration of global sea level over the past 100 years, and indeed why global sea level has possibly decelerated for at least the last 80 years.

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That’s why the Soviet Union was such a success

Andrew Bolt – Monday, May 23, 11 (06:58 am)

Government-deleivered services tend to be more expensive. Who knew?

THE government-owned electricity networks in NSW and Queensland are charging almost twice as much as privately owned operators in Victoria, resulting in soaring bills for consumers, a new report warns…

The government-owned networks also have more frequent and longer outages than the private networks that operate in Victoria and South Australia.

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Blame the ocean, not the emissions

Andrew Bolt – Monday, May 23, 11 (06:03 am)

Maybe we’re looking in the wrong place to explain some of the changes in the climate, admits one of Europe’s top institutes for marine science.

A press release from the Leibniz Institute of Marine Sciences at the Christian-Albrechts Universität zu Kiel (IFM-GEOMAR) explains its paper in Nature:

Our climate is affected by the ocean in many ways. The most prominent example is the El Niño phenomenon in the Pacific, a well-documented interannual climate signal. Oceanographers from the Leibniz Institute of Marine Sciences in Kiel (IFM-GEOMAR) and Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI, USA) have recently documented the effect of deep equatorial currents in the Atlantic on rainfall and climate over West Africa....

Oceanographers from the Leibniz Institute of Marine Sciences in Kiel (IFM-GEOMAR), in collaboration with their colleagues from the USA, were now able to demonstrate the existence of regular interannual temperature fluctuations which have an effect on the rainfall of the region but cannot be traced back to the previously known sources. Even more astonishing for the scientists is the fact that all measurements indicate that these fluctuations are caused by deep currents of the equatorial Atlantic itself.

“To date, when trying to explain tropical climate variations, we have always looked upwards, specifically to the atmosphere. Our new data, for the first time, direct our attention towards the depths of the ocean, thereby opening new perspectives for our scientific approach,” explained Dr Peter Brandt, professor at IFM-GEOMAR. ...

“The time series obtained over the past ten to twenty years have revealed previously unknown fluctuations of currents and temperatures at the surface of the tropical Atlantic which have a regular cycle of 54 months, or 4 ½ years,” explained Peter Brandt. The scientists were able to document similar fluctuations of the “Deep Jets”, deep currents down to 3000 m with speeds of 10-20 cm/sec. They flow along the equator, crossing the entire Atlantic, with flow reversals every few hundred meters. “These jets are generated in the deep ocean, and their energy apparently propagates upwards through the water column. Once near the surface, this energy affects currents and temperatures,” stated Dr Brandt.

(Thanks to reader Old Fellah.)

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Australia hurt, planet not helped

Andrew Bolt – Monday, May 23, 11 (12:07 am)

All pain, zero gain:

One of Australia’s largest home and business electricity suppliers, TRUenergy, has warned thathousehold power bills will double in six years after a carbon price is introduced and uncertainty over its implementation might lead to power shortages.

The gas and electricity giant’s chief executive, Richard McIndoe, said uncertainty over what the long-term carbon price might be has stalled capital investment in the industry and halted construction of new power stations....

The mooted carbon tax of between $20 and $25 a tonne of emissions would not change industry behaviour but would double electricity bills for households over six years given the 30 per cent rise, he said.

“A carbon price will add another $300 per household on top of that, so for a six-year period you’re seeing an effective doubling of electricity prices per household with no tangible benefit,” Mr McIndoe said.

(Thanks to reader John.)

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Why ethnic teams, anyway?

Andrew Bolt – Monday, May 23, 11 (12:02 am)

The problem with identifying so strongly with one ethnic group is that the temptation is to see members of others as less human:

SOCCER fans have attacked a referee in the worst case of violence against an official in the history of the league.

Referee Petros Katsiokalis was set upon by more than half a dozen thugs in a group of at least 20 spectators who punched, kicked and stomped on him after storming the pitch when their team BESA FC lost a cup night clash to the Western Strikers, at Carnegie Reserve, Royal Park (in Adelaide), last week.

Mr Katsiokalis, 48, said he feared he was going to die.

“The last thing I remembered before blacking out was someone about to stomp on my head...,” recalled the veteran referee of 22 years, who ended up in hospital with a facial fracture, a cut forehead and severe bleeding…

Options could include kicking BESA FC out the competition, as has happened to previous amateur soccer clubs associated with the Albanian community. In July 2008, the Black Eagles Soccer Club, BESA FC’s predecessor, was banned after a sickening brawl in which an opponent was kicked unconscious.

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And if South Africa sent over a whites-only team?

Andrew Bolt – Monday, May 23, 11 (12:02 am)

South African abandons apartheid as evil, but the Australian Football League adopts it as good:

An AFL match will be staged as an exhibition event at the Africa Games in Mozambique in September.It will be between a team from South Africa and an Australian Aboriginal team.

(Thanks to reader Andrew.)

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On the need for ceremonies which divide us by race

Andrew Bolt – Sunday, May 22, 11 (02:19 pm)

One reason we need welcome ceremonies is that non-Aborigines are an “introduced species”. (From 6.40)


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